If you’ve configured your computer to communicate on the Internet, you’ve already set it up as a DNS client. When you try to access another computer, you look for a database of hostnames and IP addresses.
As discussed in Chapter 21, there are two databases of hostnames and IP addresses: /etc/hosts and the DNS servers listed in /etc/resolv.conf. The database that your computer searches, and the order, is determined by your /etc/host.conf file, which normally includes one line: order hosts,bind. This means your computer first looks for IP addresses in /etc/hosts before searching any DNS servers listed in /etc/resolv.conf, which you can configure per the instructions in Chapter 21.
No additional configuration is required.